1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power supply control device, a power supply control system, a power supply control method, and a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium encoded with a power supply control program. More specifically, the present invention relates to a power supply control device connected to electronic equipment driven by a commercial power supply, a power supply control system including a plurality of power supply control devices connected to a plurality of electronic equipment, a power supply control method executed in the power supply control device, and a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium encoded with a power supply control program for causing a computer to execute the power supply control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic equipment such as Multi-Functional Peripherals (hereinafter referred to as “MFPs”) is required to reduce power consumption in a standby state when not being in operation. MFPs are often driven by electric power fed from a commercial power supply. Therefore, some of recent MFPs have a function of reducing power consumption in a standby state.
On the other hand, MFPs have a communication circuit for communicating with external devices and need to activate the communication circuit in order to externally receive data, which consumes power in the communication circuit even in a standby state.
As a technique for solving this problem, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-199765 discloses a data transfer system including host equipment and client equipment connected via a LAN through an intelligent hub. The data transfer system includes holding means for holding data output from the host equipment, first output means for outputting a confirmation signal for confirming that power is on to the client equipment when the data from the host equipment is held in the holding means, second output means for outputting a proxy response signal for the client equipment to the host equipment, and control means for outputting the data held in the holding means to the client equipment if a response signal indicating power-on is input from the client equipment.
However, some existing MFPs do not have the function of reducing power consumption in a standby state, and the conventional data transfer system cannot be applied to such MFPs.